This is a question I kept running into while researching the bus life world, and honestly it took me a while to sort through it. Both options attract the same kind of person — someone who wants to simplify, own their space outright, and stop throwing money at a mortgage or landlord. But once you … Read more
Weight is the thing that can quietly ruin an otherwise great bus build, and most people don’t think about it until it’s too late. I learned this the hard way when I started digging into what actually goes into a conversion and realized just how fast the pounds add up. Every bus has a Gross … Read more
Owning a skoolie means owning a commercial vehicle, and commercial vehicles need a real maintenance schedule. Not a vague “change the oil when the light comes on” kind of schedule — an actual plan with actual intervals. Keeping a skoolie running well isn’t complicated, but it does require consistency. These are diesel engines built for … Read more
Insurance was the part of this whole bus conversion journey that made me want to throw my laptop across the room. Not because you can’t get it, but because finding a straight answer about who actually writes these policies feels like pulling teeth. Every forum thread contradicts the last one, and half the companies people … Read more
Your bed is the one thing in the bus you absolutely can’t compromise on. You’re going to spend a third of your life on it, you’re going to be sore from building all day, and if your sleeping situation isn’t right, nothing else in the bus matters. The bed you pick depends on your bus … Read more
If you’re shopping for a bus to convert, the dimensions are going to dictate pretty much everything about your build. Your floor plan, your headroom, whether you can fit a real bathroom, how much storage you get — all of it comes down to the numbers. And I found out early on that those numbers … Read more
Every appliance decision in a bus build connects to three or four other decisions you haven’t made yet. Pick a propane stove and now you need gas lines, a tank mount, ventilation, and a CO detector. Go all-electric and suddenly your battery bank needs to be twice the size you planned. It’s one of those … Read more
Gear ratios aren’t something most people think about when they’re shopping for a school bus. But pick the wrong one and you’ll either be crawling on the highway at 55 mph with the engine screaming, or white-knuckling it down a mountain pass with brakes that are getting hotter by the mile. (See our guide on … Read more
Wiring a bus is the part of the build that scares people the most, and honestly, I get it. But after spending a ton of time digging into this and talking to builders, I can tell you it’s not nearly as complicated as it looks once you break it into steps. Wiring a school bus … Read more
Once you’re parked somewhere in a 35-foot school bus, you realize pretty quickly that you need a way to get around town without firing up the big rig every time you need milk. Towing a smaller vehicle behind your skoolie is how most full-timers solve that problem, but the method you choose matters a lot … Read more